


Harsh as the World Is

by Elleth



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-11 01:19:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15304263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/pseuds/Elleth
Summary: Ensi Hotakainen can't afford to be soft.





	Harsh as the World Is

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wavewright62](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wavewright62/gifts).



Ensi sucks in the Kalevala and Kanteletar with her mother's milk, and her speech models to their rhythm until she's grown enough to reluctantly play with other children, when she's not roaming dreams and forests asking questions from her mother, from strangers, from spirits, traces the sick grace of the creatures under the water with her eyes, or steels her mind against the imperatives that trolls lure her with. She is five then, perhaps six, and whittles a stick into a weapon if her control fails, while inside the schoolhouse the teacher drones on like the stupid bore she is.

*

The lilt of the runos never goes out of her voice as she learns that if the world is at all like a song, that song isn't pretty, just as she isn't. Stick-thin and hard with muscle, she wraps herself in a towel in sauna before diving into the lake arrow-like, and thinks 'to fuck with you all; I keep you safe and you whisper. I hope the saunanhaltia skins you alive'. She is thirteen, orphaned, and scowls at the pretty girl with laughing eyes who's followed her into the water. It's a mistake. She isn't, can't, won't be attached. 

*

She becomes attached against her will. To her own bewilderment, she loves her sons and grandchildren, as little as she can, as much as she must. Too much empathy is weakness, too little and she'd be a troll. The right measure, like drops of honey into tea. Her sons laugh when she sweetens hers, tell her that it's no longer the bad old times, and the island yields plenty. That's her one mistake - to not teach them wariness, to assume safety - and they are all five gone before their children are grown. 

Her death will at least teach the little ones.


End file.
